


The Botanist's Most Important Failure

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Astronomy, Botany, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy, Flash Fic, Fluff and Angst, Medieval, Microfic, Mutual Pining, No Lesbians Die, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Royalty, Stargazing, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21990349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: "You would have gone where I could not follow—a place without stars.""According to your afterlife.""According to anyone's, anywhere. I've traveled quite a bit."***The queen's botanist attempts suicide, but rediscovers love.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 23





	The Botanist's Most Important Failure

**Author's Note:**

> This is a version of the original Twitterfic, same title, posted over at my now-deactivated personal account in December 2019. It has been given minor edits for consistency with other stories and readability on AO3. ❤️
> 
>  **SUGGESTED RE-READING:** None. This is the first _Second Starfall_ story ever written! (Though not the first chronologically speaking.) Enjoy!
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

The royal botanist awoke. Her eyes were dry as she watched the stony ceiling. It would take time before the extract passed through her, before she would regain the ability to move her extremities. 

She had failed.

***

First, the queen visited, and the castellan, and all the royal messengers, and even the cook who had never wanted much to do with her. That was nice.

*** 

In a few days the botanist could turn her neck. Through the window, she sought stars, but found none. Stringy, gut-like clouds passed over the castle nightly, obscuring every constellation the chief guard had taught her.

Ah, the chief guard—

Perhaps it was well and good the botanist couldn't see the stars.

*** 

Then the castellan brought the chief guard to see her, and let them be. 

Said the botanist, "Are you ashamed of what I've done?" (For the guard was a soldier, once upon a time.) 

"Hm. Melancholy is a disease like any other," the guard replied. Her cheeks were wet, her smile strained. "Although not all are lucky enough to live through it." 

They pressed their foreheads together. 

"If you call this luck," the botanist murmured. 

"I do, I think. You would have gone where I could not follow—a place without stars." 

"According to your afterlife." 

"According to anyone's, anywhere. I've traveled quite a bit." 

"Rub it in, why don't you." 

"I don't have to—if you'll stick around just this once. For all the things we've yet to see." 

The guard tucked her arms under her weakened lover (who was, to her, but a little creature) and brought her closer to the window. Blackness shrouded the castle beyond. 

"This sounds like courting talk," said the botanist, leaning her head against the guard's chest. 

"Do you truly believe a disease would stop me from courting you, little devil?" 

The botanist laughed, but it was a wheeze of a noise. "I believe you deserve better." 

"And what do you deserve?" 

Silence. 

"Let's start with this," the guard whispered, "more nights watching the sky, perhaps. I haven't begun to tell you half of what I learned in..." 

No one had removed the decanter of extract from the botanist's desk. As her lover's voice trailed off, the botanist eyed it. She had not told anyone how she had used it. Its contents looked murky in the dark—but how it would glimmer reflecting a parade of stars...

***

Later that night the two dumped it out over the castle walls, the guard's rougher hand over the botanist's unsteady one. And, as if purified, the stars and moon emerged above them not too long after. At which the botanist said—her frail arms hooked around her lover's neck—"How about that." 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment or a kudos or whatever the heck if this tickled your fancy. There shall be more! ❤️
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** The story that started it all. This was meant to be a one-off writing experiment, but then it grew into the _Second Starfall_ universe. Funny how that happens.
> 
> I like to imagine Marlesse (the chief guard) turns on an entirely different, compartmentalized part of her personality when Valériane (the botanist) is down and out. Valériane does the same for her. It's how they get through this stuff. Well, that and love.


End file.
